Rotter World (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

“What are you listening to?” asked Dravko.

“The humans.” Tatyana lay on the top bunk, her head pressed against the inner wall of the Ryder. “They’re arguing.”

“About what?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Probably about us,” chimed in Tibor. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re debating the best way to get rid of us and make it look like we were rotter casualties.”

“Enough,” barked Dravko. “Tatyana, move away from the wall and get some rest. You’ll need it tonight.”

Tatyana obeyed reluctantly, mostly because the shouting had ended and she could no longer hear anything.

Rest was the last thing any of the vampires could hope for. The death of Sultanic weighed heavily on them, not only because he was their friend, but because the scarcity of their numbers was such that the loss of even one member proved devastating. Combined with the uncertainty of what would happen to them in the next few hours, both at the hands of the rotters and their human comrades, they were too agitated to sleep.

After several minutes, Tatyana leaned her head against the wall. “It’s quiet out there. I can’t hear anyone.”

Dravko sighed. “You have to trust the humans.”

“Why?” asked Tibor. “They despise us as much as we despise them.”

“You really hate the humans that much?”

“I despise what we’ve become living with them. Having to rely on them for our safety, having to feed off livestock so we don’t offend them, having to treat them like equals. It’s… it’s….”

“Demeaning,” Tatyana concluded his sentence.

Dravko found himself at a loss for words. He felt the same way at times, although he would never voice those feelings to anyone other than Elena. Nor would he admit that taking down those gang members offered a thrill he had not experienced since before the outbreak. The way each man had screamed and struggled, pumping adrenaline into the bloodstream, sweetening the vital life fluid. It may not have been as exhilarating as a hunt through the streets of New York City, but it provided more of a rush than feeding off cattle.

Strangely, the kill also dredged up an emotion Dravko had not felt for centuries. Guilt. Not for what happened to the gang members, because he could have cared less about them. They had to die if the rest of the raiding party hoped to survive, the manner of death being irrelevant. The guilt resulted from the awkward position he had placed Robson in. After spending so many months repressing their natural instincts in order to fit in with the humans, their feeding frenzy only reinforced the vast differences between the two. Robson had put his reputation on the line defending them, especially while on this insane mission. For the first time since humans and vampires had reluctantly agreed to join forces, Dravko felt a tenuous bond developing between the two species. At best, yesterday’s lapse would make Robson’s efforts to defend them that much more difficult. At worst, it could well have undone months of reconciliation.

Still, he empathized with Tibor and Tatyana. “I know it’s not our way, but we’ve had to adapt. Without the humans, we’d be dead by now.”

“I could say the same about the humans,” said Tibor. “We lost Sultanic because he tried to save Whitehouse, and the humans could care less.”

“That’s not true. Robson was upset about Sultanic.”

“I wish all the humans were as decent as him,” said Tatyana.

“Robson’s not the threat to us,” admitted Tibor, “but there’s only a few like him. Most of the humans would drag us into the sun without a second thought, especially Compton and the colonel.”

“Those two are evil.” Tatyana sneered.

“And once we get to their compound, they’ll be running the show,” Tibor added ominously. “We won’t be able to rely on Robson to protect us.”

“Then we rely on ourselves,” Dravko responded defiantly. “When we get to Site R, we don’t stop looking over our shoulders. We stick together, or stay with the humans we trust, like Robson or Natalie. No one goes off alone or puts himself in a situation where Compton or Thompson can isolate and take us down.”

Tibor raised himself in his hammock and looked over at Dravko. “And what happens if Compton or Thompson try something?”

Dravko shrugged. “Then we’ll do whatever we have to in order to survive.”

Chapter Thirty

Preparations for the final run to Site R were completed by noon. Since the convoy would not be setting out until after dark, Robson advised everyone to get a few hours of rest. Once the others had bunked down for the afternoon, he made his rounds of the perimeter to check on the Angels standing guard duty. Before heading back to the armored car and settling down himself, Robson strolled a quarter of a mile down the road, stopping by a small bridge that crossed over a creek. The road continued straight as far as he could see until it disappeared in the distance.

It reminded him of the autumn Sunday drives he used to take with Susan when they would stop for a picnic lunch. A warm sun mixed with the chill of an October day, the two blending into a comfortable afternoon. The foliage had just started to turn down here, small patches of red, orange, and yellow blotting the trees. Around him, the sounds of nature echoed through the woods. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and occasionally some hidden animal scurried through the brush, all of them oblivious to the near extinction of the once most dominant species. This stretch of road lay in stark contrast to the urban nightmare not far removed from them.

Robson didn’t want to think about what waited for them beyond the horizon.

“A penny for your thoughts?” The voice came from behind him. He turned to see Natalie standing directly there.

“You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”

She moved up close beside him. “Worrying about what we’ll face tonight?”

“Partly.” Robson kept his gaze focused on the far end of the road. “You realize less than ten miles from here sits a horror none of us have ever experienced, at least since the first days of the outbreak?”

“I’m trying not to dwell on it.”

A moment of silence passed between them, a few brief seconds where they enjoyed each other’s company in a pristine countryside left untouched by the living dead. It reminded Robson of better days. If this raid succeeded, the world might enjoy days like this once again.

“What else is bothering you?”

“Huh?” Robson had only half heard the question.

“You said you were partly worried because of tonight’s run. What else is bothering you?

“I’m concerned about what we’ll find at Site R. Compton and Thompson aren’t telling us everything.”

“If it’s any consolation, we’re all worried about that.”

He had not heard any of the others voice concern about their mission. “Really?”

Natalie nodded. “I overheard some of my girls complaining that no one is leveling with us. And Daytona and Ari were bitching about it just this morning.”

“And here I was thinking I’m just being paranoid.”

“I prefer to think of it as you being cautious. Whatever you call it, it’s kept us alive this long, so don’t stop now. And for what it’s worth, no matter what we face in the next few days, my girls are behind you all the way. Especially me.”

Natalie reached out and wrapped his hand in her own, gently squeezing it for mutual reassurance.

Robson desperately wanted to take Natalie in his arms and kiss her, but refrained from being impulsive. The last thing either of them needed right now was a physical distraction that took their minds off of the task at hand. There might be time enough for that later.

Instead, the two of them stood quietly on the road, holding hands and enjoying each other’s company.

Chapter Thirty-one

The sun had set nearly two hours earlier. Everyone had eaten dinner. For the humans it consisted of MREs and fire-brewed coffee, and for the vampires stored cattle blood. Afterwards, Robson took aside the drivers and those who would navigate and, huddled together in the glare of the armored car’s headlights, each of them reviewed the maps and satellite photos until they practically knew the route to Gettysburg by heart. Even that familiarity did not evoke much confidence, for each member of the raiding party knew that the toughest part of the trip lay just ahead, and the success or failure of this mission could well hinge on what went down in the next hour.

When the drivers and navigators felt fairly confident of what to anticipate, Robson gathered everyone in a circle, bathed in the lights from the armored car and bus. He carefully studied each of their faces, assuming some of those gathered probably would not make it through the night. A nagging part of him wondered how many more of his people he would lose before they made it to Gettysburg. Pushing aside the negativity and focusing on the task at hand, Robson took a deep breath.

“At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I want to warn you about what we face. A few miles down this road we’ll be entering the suburbs around Harrisburg. The satellite photos don’t tell us much. We think it’s clear of traffic and debris, but the photos are months old. And we have no idea how much rotter activity we’ll face. The safest best is to expect the worst.

“The goal is to make it to Site R. If we don’t get Compton and his team to the facility to get the vaccine, then we’ve wasted our time and lives for nothing. In other words, every one of us is expendable. So be careful out there. If any of the vehicles get separated from the convoy, haul ass out of the area and make your own way to Site R. We’ll meet you there. If we find ourselves in a clusterfuck of rotters and one of the vehicles gets stuck, we’ll try to get you out as long as it doesn’t endanger the rest of us. If we can’t get to you, you’re on your own. We can’t risk any heroics that’ll get us all killed. Are we all clear on that?”

No one answered.

“Are we clear on that?”

The group responded affirmatively, though with little enthusiasm.

“Good. Compton will ride in the bus with the Angels. Jennifer will go with Tatyana and Mad Dog in the Ryder. Thompson is with me and Dravko in the armored car.”

Thompson shook his head. “It’s better if I stay with the doctor.”

“Sorry, but each vehicle will carry one member of your team. God forbid, if something happens to the bus and the Ryder, I don’t want this whole mission to be a failure.”

The colonel started to protest, but Compton cut him off. “He’s right. Besides, if these young ladies can’t protect me, there’s not much you’ll be able to do.”

Thompson backed down. He turned and stepped away from the group, clearly upset at being dressed down yet again by his commanding officer.

Robson resumed the briefing, this time trying to make eye contact with everyone standing around him. “I don’t know if any of you still believe in God after what we’ve been through the past eight months, but if you do, now’s a good time to pray for success. We’ll pull out in five minutes. With luck, we’ll all meet up at Site R.”

The group broke up and went their separate ways. Some went off into the woods to relieve themselves, while a few found a private spot away from the others and prayed. Only Natalie stayed behind, waiting until the others had cleared out before stepping up to Robson. A look of concern replaced her usual smile.

“Do you really think it’ll be that bad?”

“We’d be foolish to think otherwise.”

Natalie forced a smile. “Expect the worse, hope for the best?”

“Something like that.”

“Just don’t do anything foolish.”

“I don’t intend to. Me, Dravko, and the colonel can take care of ourselves. I need you to keep an eye on Compton and get him to Site R in one piece.”

“You can count on me.”

“I know I can.”

Natalie stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Robson, hugging him. He could feel the warmth of her body even underneath the leather pants and jacket. She held the embrace for several seconds.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“You too.”

When Natalie finally broke free, she turned and headed back to the school bus without looking at Robson. He thought he noticed tears in her eyes. He watched until she boarded the school bus, and then made his way to the armored car and climbed into the passenger seat. Dravko sat in the driver’s seat, the engine idling. Thompson sat in back, staring at the interior wall. No one spoke.

Daytona’s voice coming from the radio broke the silence. “Ready when you are, boss.”

“Same here,” answered Mad Dog from the Ryder.

Robson grabbed the radio and keyed the microphone button. “All right, let’s roll. And may the wind be at our backs.”

Dravko shifted into first gear and eased his foot off the clutch. The armored car lurched forward and slowly picked up speed. Robson glanced into the side mirror. Daytona followed one hundred feet behind them as per his earlier instructions, with Mad Dog bringing up the rear.

This is it
, thought Robson, trying not to think about what they faced.

* * *

A few miles ahead, Route 87 doglegged to the south and skimmed the outskirts of Montoursville. The town lay off to their left, black and silent. The buildings appeared as dark shadows against the moonlit sky. No more than half a dozen rotters wandered along the road, attracted by the sound of the convoy. Each of them turned and lumbered towards the approaching vehicles, mindless creatures only aware that food roared towards them. One of the rotters stumbled out into the center of the lane and held up its hands as if to flag down the convoy. In the light from the armored car’s floodlights, Robson could see it had once been a young girl no more than ten years old. It wore blue jeans and a torn red sweater that dangled off its left shoulder, both soiled with dried blood and gore. The skin had been stripped off its right arm, shoulder, and chest, revealing the skeleton underneath the gristle. Dravko easily swerved around it and continued on down the road.

A few miles later, Route 87 again doglegged, this time to the west, and merged with Route 147. Up ahead, the skyline of Kenmar and Faxon cast a dark shadow against the horizon, creating an abyss that the convoy was about to enter. Robson wiped his sweaty palms against his pants leg.

“Get ready,” he said to Dravko. “We’re about to enter hell.”

They spotted the first rotter a few miles outside the city limits, a naked man with only its right arm and torso dressed in a tattered National Guard uniform. It walked aimlessly down the center of the road. Dravko veered around it. Three more rotters could be seen a hundred yards up ahead, and beyond that nearly a dozen more moved about in the shadows.

“Their numbers are increasing,” said Dravko, a barely detectable strain in his voice, “and we’re not even in the city yet.”

“Probably stragglers that set out looking for food.”

“That doesn’t bode well.”

Robson quickly realized how prophetic Dravko had been. The armored car soon entered the city limits, the dark hulks of gutted and abandoned buildings towering above them like canyon walls. The floodlights illuminated their exteriors, the beams reflecting off the shattered remains of storefront windows and detailing the dried blood and burn marks that marred the facades. Abandoned vehicles sat at awkward angles every few yards, having been pulled off to the side to make way for first responders and the military. Some were completely burned and gutted. Most of the others sat with their doors open, more often than not the insides smeared with human carnage. Every manner of debris littered the streets and sidewalks: newspapers, suitcases and travel bags, water bottles, empty food containers, weapons.

Amongst the dross of human society, dozens of living dead spread out across the road, with even more figures lurking in the shadows out of range of the floodlights. From every direction, lifeless eyes fell on the convoy, shimmering in the light’s glare. In their stare were none of the remnants of their former humanity. No life, no emotion, no thought. Just a recognition of food. Slowly and unsteadily, they lumbered into the street toward the vehicles, reaching out. One rotter in a Pennsylvania State Police uniform slammed its lifeless hand against Robson’s window as they passed, smearing the surface with chunks of decayed flesh.

Dravko swerved around the rotters for the first few hundred feet before the encroaching horde made avoiding them impossible. Two of the living dead stepped right in front of the armored car, one dressed in a business suit and tie, its chest stained with dried blood, the other a nurse with its lower jaw missing. Dravko slammed the armored car into them. The nurse careened to the right, tumbling through the air and knocking three other rotters to the ground. The zombie in the suit took the brunt of the left fender in the chest, being knocked back onto the street where the armored car’s left tires rode over it. Inside the armored car, Robson and the others were shaken around as the vehicle bumped over the corpse.

“Christ,” said Thompson from the back. “How much more of this to do we have to go through?”

“It’s about two miles before the turn to the bridge,” responded Robson.

“Shit.”

“Tell me about it,” said Dravko.

He slammed into another rotter in a National Guard uniform. This time the thud of the armored car smacking into flesh was accompanied by a loud pop. The lights ahead of them dimmed as two of the floodlights shattered.

“Damn it!” cursed Dravko.

“Maybe we should let Daytona take the lead,” suggested Robson.

“There’s not enough room to risk it. Besides, if we slow down to let him pass and these things swarm us, we might not be able to get going again.”

The collective moan of rotters in a feeding frenzy filtered into the armored car despite the thickness of the walls. Robson didn’t know what unnerved him more, the moans or the sound of dead hands slapping at the armored car, trying to claw their way to the meat inside. The horde of rotters steadily grew thicker as they converged in the center of the street. Each one Dravko hit sent a spray of gore across the windshield. He switched on the wipers, but the blades only succeeded in smearing the blood and guts across the glass. The red smears on the windshield and the massive swarm of flies hovering around the floodlights decreased their visibility.

Robson tried to read the names on the cross streets to judge how far they were from their turn. Off to his right he noticed an electronics store, its front windows smashed in. Boxes of flat screen TVs, computers, and radios littered the ground out front, mixed in with a pile of mummified corpses belonging to looters who had been set on by the living dead and devoured before they could escape with their bounty.

Finally he saw a sign for Franklin Street. He glanced down at his map and searched until he found it. Shit, they were only a quarter of the way to their turn.

The armored car swerved left, causing Robson to look up. With all the rotters converging in the middle of the road, space opened up off to the left. Dravko moved into the open lane and floored it, trying to gain as much distance as possible before the living dead surged back around them.

They had traveled about two hundred yards when the hulk of an overturned ambulance loomed in front of them. Dravko veered to the right, whipping around the wreck. The floodlights fell onto the form of a nearly three-hundred-pound rotter that stood naked in the center of the street, its bulging gut drooping across its genitals. It turned to the approaching lights, arms flailing. With the ambulance on the left and the mass of rotters on the right, Dravko had nowhere to go but straight. He slammed his foot down on the accelerator, shifted into a lower gear, and aimed the armored car’s right fender at the bloated rotter. Robson braced for the impact.

They smashed into it at over sixty miles per hour. Its stomach exploded, showering the front of the vehicle with chewed, undigested, rotting meat. Several chunks came to rest on the hood and windshield, or got tangled up in the floodlight supports. As horrible as the sight was, it could not compare to the stench filtering in through the air conditioning system. Decayed flesh. Shit. Bodily gases. Robson leaned forward and vomited.

“You all right?” asked Dravko.

“Yeah,” choked Robson. He gagged, spitting up a chunk of vomitus which he spit onto the floor. His own puke smelled better than the living dead.

“Good. I need you to tell me when we reach the turn.”

“I’m on it.” Wiping his mouth clean, Robson grabbed the map and began comparing it to cross streets.

“What street are you looking for?” asked Thompson, who had moved forward to lean over between Dravko and Robson.

“Market Street. On the l—”

The armored car shook, accompanied by another thud of a body striking metal. Both men looked up as a rotter flew up over the hood, careening off the windshield before falling away to the left. The remaining floodlights were shattered by the concussion, dimming the road ahead of them.

“It’ll be on the left,” resumed Robson.